An international conference entitled “ Education and the Family in Post-atheist Societies” opened in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, on 18 September 2002.
Theologians, scholars, religious and secular educators from various countries, including Russia, France, Italy, Great Britain, the USA and Ukraine, came to participate in the conference. Among the participants were also famous philosophers and theologians Serhii Averyntsev, Mykola Loskyi, Mykyta Struve and Giovanna Paraveccini. The organizers focused on the tasks that need to be done by religious education in a society where religion was forbidden for decades and in which the family remains the last stronghold of religious education. Viktor Bondarenko, head of the National Committee on Religious Matters, noted that the reintroduction of religious education in Ukrainian schools does not mean returning to the patterns of the beginning of the previous century. Instead, he said that it means Ukraine will adapt the European model of religious instruction, based on free will. According to Metropolitan Volodymyr (Sabodan), head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP), who delivered a speech at the conference, “The Church sees its pastoral role in the preservation of unity within the family, because the upbringing of the child depends upon the atmosphere in the family.” Italian scholar Giovanna Paraveccini believes that instruction in Christianity in schools with disregard for ecumenism is utterly impossible.
Sources: www.orthodox.org.ua and www.radiosvoboda.org